Backlift, a Y Combinator-backed startup that’s launching today, describes itself as a back-end service for front-end developers. The service takes all of the work of setting up a server environment out of the equation and just lets front-end developers focus on their work. All a user needs is a Dropbox account – Backlift uses Dropbox as a file syncing service – and a text editor. With Backlift, a developer doesn’t need to know how to set up Rails, Django or node.js to get started. As Backlift founder Cole Krumbholz told me last week, the idea behind the service is to allow developers to jump right into working on their front-end code. For many people, he said, front-end tools can be a bit daunting and he wants Backlift to be a great learning tool, but he also aims to make it a platform for prototyping and, soon, a platform for hosting applications. To get started, users simply sign in with their Dropbox account, create a new app from based on a number of templates, including numerous backbone.js sample apps, a Google Maps API-based site, and basic Bootstrap-based sites. You can also use other popular technologies like AngularJS, CoffeeScript and Handlebars. Backlift then creates a new folder in your Dropbox account (and hence on your desktop, too) and you can start editing it with your favorite text editor. Every time you save an edit, Dropbox will sync with Backlift and you can immediately see the changes on your site (syncing starts less than a second after your changes are uploaded to Dropbox). Given that most applications need to work with at least some data, Backlift also offers a basic API for working with data, as well as an admin dashboard for adding users and browsing, importing and exporting the data in your database. One of the companies that has been using Backlift extensively during the beta phase is Automatic.com – the YC-backed company that recently launched its hardware for turning any car into a connected car. “We have our own Amazon S3 servers, however Backlift is a much easier, faster, and secure way of working on the site as we got it ready for launch and showed investors,” Automatic.com’s visual and interactive designer Gabriel Valdivia told me. The service, Krumbholz told me, will evolve constantly and the team plans to launch quite a few new features in the near future – though
Tensions on the Korean peninsula are on the rise as the U.S. believes that North Korea may conduct another missile test. NBC News' Tracie Potts reports.
By Christine Kim and Joyce Lee, Reuters
SEOUL - North Korea warned foreigners in South Korea on Tuesday to leave the country because they were at risk in the event of conflict, the latest threat of war from Pyongyang.
Soaring tensions on the peninsula have been fuelled by North Korean anger over the imposition of U.N. sanctions after its last nuclear arms test in February, creating one of the worst crises since the end of the Korean War in 1953.
"We do not wish harm on foreigners in South Korea should there be a war," said the KCNA news agency, citing its Korea Asia-Pacific Peace Committee.
Pyongyang last week advised embassies there to consider pulling out in case of war. Earlier on Tuesday, North Korean workers failed to turn up at a factory complex operated with South Korea, effectively shutting down the last major symbol of cooperation between the hostile neighbors.
The North Korea government pulled thousands of workers from an industrial factory ? jointly run with South Korea ? a dramatic move for an extremely impoverished country ? as fears mount that the North is poised to test fire two missiles. Amb. Nick Burns discusses.
Few embassies in Seoul have advised their citizens to quit. The United States, which has also been threatened by Pyongyang, has said there were no imminent signs of threats to American citizens.
Pyongyang has shown no sign of preparing its 1.2 million-strong army for war, indicating the threats could be partly intended for domestic purposes to bolster Kim Jong Un, 30, the third in his family to lead the reclusive country.
South Korea's president said she was disappointed at North Korea's decision to halt operations at the Kaesong industrial park, which generates $2 billion in trade for the impoverished state.
News of the Kaesong closure diverted attention from speculation that the North was about to launch some sort of provocative act this week -- perhaps a missile launch or new nuclear test. However, residents of Seoul carried on with daily activities with no trace of anxiety.
Few experts had expected Pyongyang to jeopardize Kaesong, which employs more than 50,000 North Koreans making household goods for 123 South Korean firms.
World leaders have expressed alarm at the crisis and the prospect of a conflict involving a country claiming to be developing nuclear weapons.
Amb. Dennis Ross discusses the rising tensions with North Korea and the role China plays in the conflict ?as well as Secretary of State John Kerry's trip to Israel to revive Mideast peace.
China, the North's sole diplomatic and financial ally, has shown increasing impatience with Pyongyang. Russian President Vladimir Putin said hostilities could create a cataclysm worse than the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster.
The North is also angry at weeks of joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises off the coast of the peninsula, with B-2 stealth bombers dispatched from their U.S. bases.
But the United States announced the postponement last weekend of a long-planned missile launch, a move officials said was aimed at easing tensions on the peninsula.
North Korean authorities told embassies in Pyongyang they could not guarantee their safety from Wednesday, after saying conflict was inevitable amid the joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises due to last until the end of the month. No diplomats appear to have left the North Korean capital.
Related:
Full North Korea coverage from NBC News
Who is North Korea's secretive leader? Here is what we know
North Korea's overseas apologists dismiss 'propaganda'
Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.
Apr. 8, 2013 ? Mars has lost much of its original atmosphere, but what's left remains quite active, recent findings from NASA's Mars rover Curiosity indicate. Rover team members reported diverse findings today at the European Geosciences Union 2013 General Assembly, in Vienna.
Evidence has strengthened this month that Mars lost much of its original atmosphere by a process of gas escaping from the top of the atmosphere.
Curiosity's Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument analyzed an atmosphere sample last week using a process that concentrates selected gases. The results provided the most precise measurements ever made of isotopes of argon in the Martian atmosphere. Isotopes are variants of the same element with different atomic weights. "We found arguably the clearest and most robust signature of atmospheric loss on Mars," said Sushil Atreya, a SAM co-investigator at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
SAM found that the Martian atmosphere has about four times as much of a lighter stable isotope (argon-36) compared to a heavier one (argon-38). This removes previous uncertainty about the ratio in the Martian atmosphere from 1976 measurements from NASA's Viking project and from small volumes of argon extracted from Martian meteorites. The ratio is much lower than the solar system's original ratio, as estimated from argon-isotope measurements of the sun and Jupiter. This points to a process at Mars that favored preferential loss of the lighter isotope over the heavier one.
Curiosity measures several variables in today's Martian atmosphere with the Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS), provided by Spain. While daily air temperature has climbed steadily since the measurements began eight months ago and is not strongly tied to the rover's location, humidity has differed significantly at different places along the rover's route. These are the first systematic measurements of humidity on Mars.
Trails of dust devils have not been seen inside Gale Crater, but REMS sensors detected many whirlwind patterns during the first hundred Martian days of the mission, though not as many as detected in the same length of time by earlier missions. "A whirlwind is a very quick event that happens in a few seconds and should be verified by a combination of pressure, temperature and wind oscillations and, in some cases, a decrease is ultraviolet radiation," said REMS Principal Investigator Javier G?mez-Elvira of the Centro de Astrobiolog?a, Madrid.
Dust distributed by the wind has been examined by Curiosity's laser-firing Chemistry and Camera (ChemCam) instrument. Initial laser pulses on each target hit dust. The laser's energy removes the dust to expose underlying material, but those initial pulses also provide information about the dust.
"We knew that Mars is red because of iron oxides in the dust," said ChemCam Deputy Principal Investigator Sylvestre Maurice of the Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Plan?tologie in Toulouse, France. "ChemCam reveals a complex chemical composition of the dust that includes hydrogen, which could be in the form of hydroxyl groups or water molecules."
Possible interchange of water molecules between the atmosphere and the ground is studied by a combination of instruments on the rover, including the Dynamic Albedo of Neutrons (DAN), provided by Russia under the leadership of DAN Principal Investigator Igor Mitrofanov.
For the rest of April, Curiosity will carry out daily activities for which commands were sent in March, using DAN, REMS and the Radiation Assessment Detector (RAD). No new commands are being sent during a four-week period while Mars is passing nearly behind the sun, from Earth's perspective. This geometry occurs about every 26 months and is called Mars solar conjunction.
"After conjunction, Curiosity will be drilling into another rock where the rover is now, but that target has not yet been selected. The science team will discuss this over the conjunction period." said Mars Science Laboratory Project Scientist John Grotzinger, of the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena.
NASA's Mars Science Laboratory Project is using Curiosity to investigate the environmental history within Gale Crater, a location where the project has found that conditions were long ago favorable for microbial life. Curiosity, carrying 10 science instruments, landed in August 2012 to begin its two-year prime mission. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, manages the project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
For more about the mission, visit: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/msl , http://www.nasa.gov/msl and http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl . You can follow the mission on Facebook and Twitter at: http://www.facebook.com/marscuriosity and http://www.twitter.com/marscuriosity .
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EARTH: Community college at seaPublic release date: 1-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Megan Sever msever@earthmagazine.org American Geosciences Institute
Research experiences for community college students build the STEM pipeline
Alexandria, VA Its 3 a.m., and students from two Oregon community colleges are struggling to keep their sea legs as they work on the deck of a research vessel that is pitching and rolling in rough seas. Their objective is to recover an ocean-bottom seismometer that has been lying 160 meters underwater off the west coast of Vancouver Island, where it has been steadily recording seismic signals and long-period pressure trends for the past year. These students are experiencing what earth scientists do for a living, as a part of the Cascadia Initiatives CC@Sea program.
With funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), CC@Sea grew out of a previous community college-university collaboration: the NSF-funded Undergraduate Catalytic Outreach and Research Experience (UCORE) program. CC@Sea picks up where UCORE left off in 2012, further building upon it.
So far, these programs have helped 134 community college students gain valuable experience in physical science research. The program has also helped change perceptions of science and engineering among students, while promoting lively discussions and strengthening the STEM pipeline at community colleges. These programs highlight an important trend in attracting new students to STEM careers in a job market in which the geosciences are increasingly struggling to find qualified candidates to fill positions.
Access to the full article by Dean Livelybrooks, a geophysicist serving as the Cascadia Initiative Expedition Team Education and Outreach specialist, can be found online at http://bit.ly/XAwfGR.
Check out other great articles available in the April issue of EARTH Magazine: Discover new twists in the Faint Young Sun problem, learn how Antarctic snowfall wont offset ice loss and see how magnetic braids can heat the corona.
###
Keep up to date with the latest happenings in Earth, energy and environment news with EARTH magazine online at http://www.earthmagazine.org/. Published by the American Geosciences Institute, EARTH is your source for the science behind the headlines.
The American Geosciences Institute is a nonprofit federation of geoscientific and professional associations that represents more than 250,000 geologists, geophysicists and other earth scientists. Founded in 1948, AGI provides information services to geoscientists, serves as a voice of shared interests in the profession, plays a major role in strengthening geoscience education, and strives to increase public awareness of the vital role the geosciences play in society's use of resources, resiliency to natural hazards, and interaction with the environment.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
EARTH: Community college at seaPublic release date: 1-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Megan Sever msever@earthmagazine.org American Geosciences Institute
Research experiences for community college students build the STEM pipeline
Alexandria, VA Its 3 a.m., and students from two Oregon community colleges are struggling to keep their sea legs as they work on the deck of a research vessel that is pitching and rolling in rough seas. Their objective is to recover an ocean-bottom seismometer that has been lying 160 meters underwater off the west coast of Vancouver Island, where it has been steadily recording seismic signals and long-period pressure trends for the past year. These students are experiencing what earth scientists do for a living, as a part of the Cascadia Initiatives CC@Sea program.
With funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), CC@Sea grew out of a previous community college-university collaboration: the NSF-funded Undergraduate Catalytic Outreach and Research Experience (UCORE) program. CC@Sea picks up where UCORE left off in 2012, further building upon it.
So far, these programs have helped 134 community college students gain valuable experience in physical science research. The program has also helped change perceptions of science and engineering among students, while promoting lively discussions and strengthening the STEM pipeline at community colleges. These programs highlight an important trend in attracting new students to STEM careers in a job market in which the geosciences are increasingly struggling to find qualified candidates to fill positions.
Access to the full article by Dean Livelybrooks, a geophysicist serving as the Cascadia Initiative Expedition Team Education and Outreach specialist, can be found online at http://bit.ly/XAwfGR.
Check out other great articles available in the April issue of EARTH Magazine: Discover new twists in the Faint Young Sun problem, learn how Antarctic snowfall wont offset ice loss and see how magnetic braids can heat the corona.
###
Keep up to date with the latest happenings in Earth, energy and environment news with EARTH magazine online at http://www.earthmagazine.org/. Published by the American Geosciences Institute, EARTH is your source for the science behind the headlines.
The American Geosciences Institute is a nonprofit federation of geoscientific and professional associations that represents more than 250,000 geologists, geophysicists and other earth scientists. Founded in 1948, AGI provides information services to geoscientists, serves as a voice of shared interests in the profession, plays a major role in strengthening geoscience education, and strives to increase public awareness of the vital role the geosciences play in society's use of resources, resiliency to natural hazards, and interaction with the environment.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
The NFL is one of the most popular sports leagues on the planet. Millions of people tune in every week to see their favorite teams go head to head. I mean, even Jets fans still turn on their TV to watch their team play, even after this:
And as online video continues to become more and more popular the NFL has made sure to include streaming to help bolster their fan base even more. It used to be impossible to watch any major sporting event without a television and cable contract, but these last few years, the Super Bowl and even the Olympics have been available online.
According to the NFL communications page, "Last year?s live stream of the Super Bowl in the United States attracted 2.1 million users, making it the most-watched, single-game sports event ever online." And this year will be no different. Not only will the Super Bowl be live streamed, but so will the Wild Card games.
This season's Wild Card race is as tight as ever with so many teams still in the hunt. So the games are set to be pretty epic. The Wild Card Playoff Games will air in a double header on January 5th on NBC. First, it's the AFC with the Cincinnati Bengals at Houston Texans at 4:30 p.m. ET. Then you can watch NFC's Minnesota Vikings at Green Bay Packers at 8 p.m. ET.
Both of these games will also be available for live streaming online and on your Verizon smartphone.
Backlift, a Y Combinator-backed startup that’s launching today, describes itself as a back-end service for front-end developers. The service takes all of the work of setting up a server environment out of the equation and just lets front-end developers focus on their work. All a user needs is a Dropbox account – Backlift uses Dropbox as a file syncing service – and a text editor. With Backlift, a developer doesn’t need to know how to set up Rails, Django or node.js to get started. As Backlift founder Cole Krumbholz told me last week, the idea behind the service is to allow developers to jump right into working on their front-end code. For many people, he said, front-end tools can be a bit daunting and he wants Backlift to be a great learning tool, but he also aims to make it a platform for prototyping and, soon, a platform for hosting applications. To get started, users simply sign in with their Dropbox account, create a new app from based on a number of templates, including numerous backbone.js sample apps, a Google Maps API-based site, and basic Bootstrap-based sites. You can also use other popular technologies like AngularJS, CoffeeScript and Handlebars. Backlift then creates a new folder in your Dropbox account (and hence on your desktop, too) and you can start editing it with your favorite text editor. Every time you save an edit, Dropbox will sync with Backlift and you can immediately see the changes on your site (syncing starts less than a second after your changes are uploaded to Dropbox). Given that most applications need to work with at least some data, Backlift also offers a basic API for working with data, as well as an admin dashboard for adding users and browsing, importing and exporting the data in your database. One of the companies that has been using Backlift extensively during the beta phase is Automatic.com – the YC-backed company that recently launched its hardware for turning any car into a connected car. “We have our own Amazon S3 servers, however Backlift is a much easier, faster, and secure way of working on the site as we got it ready for launch and showed investors,” Automatic.com’s visual and interactive designer Gabriel Valdivia told me. The service, Krumbholz told me, will evolve constantly and the team plans to launch quite a few new features in the near future – though
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Public release date: 1-Apr-2013
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